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The third first mobile TV phone is here. Yes, you read that right; the first phone with Dyle Mobile TV, the Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G for MetroPCS, is the third major attempt in the past six years at getting Americans to watch TV on their phones. And while the phone itself is overpriced and the service is severely short on channels, I think Dyle has a better chance than previous efforts of surviving - because it has to.

The Galaxy S Lightray 4G The Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G is a hacked Samsung Droid Charge (Verizon Wireless), with a retractable 7-inch antenna extendable from the top right corner, for $459. That's $210 more than the excellent LG Connect 4G, so the price would suggest a top-of-the-line smartphone. This isn't a top-of-the-line smartphone. Rather, you're paying a premium for the brand-new technology.

A recap: the Droid Charge Galaxy S Aviator Lightray 4G is a large but light Android 2.3-powered smartphone with speedy LTE networking and an 8-megapixel camera on the back. For more, read our Droid Charge and Samsung Aviator reviews, as they're all basically the same phone, or wait for our full review of this phone early next week. The phone runs on MetroPCS's inexpensive plans, starting at $40 per month including taxes.

MetroPCS has taken one for the technology team before. The Samsung Craft was an expensive feature phone with a subpar Web browser, but it was also the first LTE phone in America. You have to respect MetroPCS for being willing to stick its neck out to push technology forward. If mobile TV becomes more popular, mobile TV phones will become cheaper.

The Lightray has two other things going for it. It has a 4.3-inch screen. According to our Readers' Choice survey, a disturbing number of consumers buy phones primarily based on screen size, so it behooves Metro to offer more big-screen phones. It's also the first MetroPCS phone to work as a mobile hotspot.

Why Dyle Mobile TV Exists The primary reason you would want this phone over the faster, less expensive LG Connect 4G is Dyle Mobile TV, so let's take a close look at that.

Mobile TV has been failing to take off in the U.S. since 2006. First Modeo said it would bring the European DVB-H system to the U.S.; it produced a prototype phone, then vanished. Qualcomm's MediaFLO got Verizon and AT&T on board in 2007, never achieved critical mass, and ended in 2010. AT&T now owns the old MediaFLO spectrum.

But there's an urgency behind Dyle that makes it different. Unlike previous attempts at mobile TV, Dyle is owned by existing broadcast TV stations. Not content providers, the actual station owners. The guys with the towers and antennas. Those stations are using many megahertz of valuable radio spectrum that's being eyed hungrily by wireless companies. Cell phone companies first took the UHF TV channels 70-83 in the 1980s, and then channels 52-69 in 2008. As smartphone usage rises, broadcast TV usage remains flat, any much-hyped trends towards cable-cutting notwithstanding.

(Chart data sources: Nielsen, Comscore, CTIA)

The broadcast station owners would never admit to this, but they need to show that they're using their valuable, "beachfront" spectrum for something people actually want. Officially, they will say that they are necessary so they can broadcast emergency alerts when the apocalypse comes, but it really helps their case if people on that smartphone curve are taking advantage of some service they provide.

So Dyle (and its competitor/partner, Mobile500, a hopefully compatible service from a different group of stations) is life-and-death levels of important to these station owners. That makes it a wee bit more urgent than Qualcomm's experiment.

If Dyle succeeds, it will help the wireless carriers, too (though less than if they could get the spectrum for themselves, of course.) Streaming video content is expensive to provide over 4G, and too much streaming video can clog up a cell-phone network. Broadcast never slows down, no matter how many people are watching.

About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than ... See Full Bio

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